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The Far Field: A Novel of Ceylon
by
Edie Meidav (Goodreads Author)
In her debut novel, Edie Meidav tells the tale of Henry Fyre Gould, a self-described anti-missionary who travels to Ceylon from the spiritualist salons of 1930s New York City. Driven by an arrogant faith in his ideals, Henry settles in the village of Rajottama, intent on establishing a model society built on the lost truths of Buddhism. Instead of a utopian village, he slo...more
Paperback, 592 pages
Published
May 10th 2002
by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
(first published 2001)
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Meidav's debut tells the story of a philanthropic American ex-pat in 1936 Ceylon and somewhere in the book there is probably a pretty decent novel but it is buried under numerous overwritten and repetitive chapters that bog the story down with about 250 unnecessary pages. (Where was her editor?)
The central character, Henry Fyre Gould, a minister's son and Buddhist convert is a sort of variation on a holy fool, a well-intentioned but selfish man with little self knowledge and an enormo...more
The central character, Henry Fyre Gould, a minister's son and Buddhist convert is a sort of variation on a holy fool, a well-intentioned but selfish man with little self knowledge and an enormo...more
This book is based on an interesting concept. A middle-aged American in the 1930s, the son of a minister, discovers Eastern religions, then heads off to Ceylon to establish a model community among the natives that will cast off British colonialism & restore their commitment to Buddhism. (He even writes a catechism for them.) But he makes little effort to understand their ways & it all comes crashing down around him. But the writing is elliptical, so self-indulgent (it would have been better at 2...more
Housing Works Bookstore Fair! $1 books! Never heard of this before, but I like historical fiction, I find Ceylon to be a very interesting place despite knowing very little, and it was extremely cheap.
Delightfully filled with imagery. I can almost smell Sri Lanka.
Free books bin refugee. Insufficiently "grabby."
Linda Smith
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Edie Meidav is the author of Lola, California (FSG, 2011), The Far Field: A Novel of Ceylon and Crawl Space (FSG, 2005). Winner of a Lannan Fellowship, a Howard Fellowship, the Kafka Prize for Fiction by an American Woman, and the Bard Fiction Prize, she teaches at Bard College.
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